Giovanni Boccaccio. “Sonnet. Of three Girls and of their Talk.”

This the last of three sonnets by or attributed to Boccaccio that DGR translated “for their beauty alone”. The other two are: “Of Fiammetta singing” and “Of his last sight of Fiametta”. His three other translations of Boccaccian sonnets were all made because they showed from="446"b“the enthusiastic reverence” that Boccaccio had for Dante and his work. These are: “To one who had censured his public Exposition of Dante”; “Inscription for a Portrait of Dante”; and “To Dante in Paradise, after Fiammetta's death”.

DGR's source text for this translation is the sonnet numbered XII in the Boccaccio section of the collection Raccolta di Rime Antiche Toscane (IV. 14). DGR's translation of the sestet varies slightly from the original Italian.

As with most of DGR's translations of the early Italian poets, the date of this one cannot be determined with certainty. It is probably one of the later translations.

The translation was first published in 1861 in The Early Italian Poets; it was reprinted in 1874 in Dante and his Circle.